Protection or Love…or Both?

You know how you can find the evidence for what you want to believe if you look hard enough. If you ask enough people, someone will tell you what you want to hear. If you find enough fears they’ll keep you from the destined heartbreak you see in your head. There’s always a reason to believe what you are trying to believe.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I’ve deleted social media, quit my job, and surrounded myself with people who won’t stand for feeding these fears. These people don’t tell me what I want to hear, they’re honest, supportive, and challenging. With love, they tell me what I need to hear.

I’ve gone back and forth about sharing this, but I think it’s important. Maybe just for me, maybe also for you, let’s see.

This week I was talking to my counselor about love and romance and my fears connected with the two. My homework was to write about it, so here we are.

In the last few weeks something has opened up in me that has brought me to a place where I have felt I’ve needed to make a major decision. 

Let’s just call the two: Left or Right.

If I go left, where the protector in me wants me to go, then I follow these fears into hiding and I let those fears be my truth. These fears about love are a jumbled mess all boiling down to the need to protect myself.

The protector in me was created from childhood, and her only concern is never letting me be in harms way again. She protected me when no one else did and I have always let her. 

She hears the fears and does what needs to be done to stay protected.

“If he chooses you and loves you, then he will resent you, hate you, and leave you.”

“If you choose him and love him, you will lose yourself.”

I feel these fears deep inside of me, and I thought I understood them completely.

The first one is something I’ve seen played out and I fear it will happen to me, and I fear I’m only good enough for a love that will end up this way.

The second one is how I understood love in my childhood and if you love someone it means you become whatever they need you to become that best suits them.

And both steeped in abandonment.

I thought the tension I held with these fears was just that of being afraid of them, but then my counselor told me something that shed light on the real tension between me and these fears.

As I talked about them I had said:

“I just want to give him something better than me.”

And then she hit me with something that knocked me on my ass and reminded me that no matter how self aware I am, there’s a ton of shit I don’t see.

She said something along the lines of:

I think wanting to give him something other than yourself is less about you believing you’re not good enough and more about you giving something that you’re more ok with him hurting and resenting. And in the end, you’re still protected.

First of all, who gave her the right to talk to me like that—I did, I know, and holy shit. When she said that it was like everything fell into place, like a missing puzzle piece in my brain was found. 

She’s right, I don’t believe I’m not good enough anymore, I believe I won’t be protected.

And I realized it was the same for the other fear of losing myself. 

If I lose myself in loving him then what I become is what he will hurt, and again, not me.

I’m not losing myself, I’m hiding, I’m protecting.

Because the only way I’m protected is if I give something else, become something else, lose (hide) myself. It’s never been an option in my brain that a person who would choose and love me would also protect me… 

So I hold onto these fears as a way to hold onto protection.

What blew my mind was that I KNEW that protection was the most important thing to me. But I didn’t know that I was going as far as letting fears masquerade as something different entirely, lies I was willing to hold on to and believe about myself just to stay protected. But as soon as I realized that, those fears were gone almost instantaneously. I’ve never felt fears leave my body like that, I think it was because they truly were empty.

So, if I go left, i’m “protected” in following these fears.

But if I go right, I see a huge mountain of hurts, lies, projections, belief patterns, etc, that I’ll need to climb. But regardless of the mountain I see, I feel pulled in this direction.

I told my counselor that I felt like I just climbed a huge mountain and I don’t know if I’m ready to climb another. 

But once that puzzle piece was set, she also said,

“Maybe it’s more of the incline rather than pikes peak.” 

Still hard, still challenging, but not as huge as I’m seeing right now. She wasn’t telling me how to feel, she was just reminding me not to forget of all the work I’ve already done. Reminding me that I’m not starting from scratch. Reminding me that I can trust the work that I’ve already done. 

Going right means a challenge, yes, a big one, YES. But it also means accepting, trusting, and honoring all I’ve done to get here. It means allowing myself, and not a representative, to be loved by someone and finding out all that it means. 

It means allowing the work that has been done to become another harvest. 

It means not hiding.

It means showing up.

It means finding out what love, protection, and life, was meant to be and who I am there. Rather than who I have had to be.

It means recognizing that those who love me already protect me. Heaven forbid someone look at me the wrong way and one of them see’s it.

I am already surrounded by all the evidence in the world that love protects.

Truthfully, for some odd reason I like to think i’m still deciding between left or right. But as soon as those fears dropped, I started walking.

Left is an illusion of safety. A world where I create fears to keep the real ones out and remain hidden from them.

Right is actual protection in love. And it’s where I’ve learned that I am safe.

—

I urge you to find those people who will only feed you truth because they believe in your best and trust in your ability. It’s not easy to find, but it’s the most valuable. And maybe ask yourself, or process with someone you trust, what else the fears in your head might actually mean to you. 

What end are they a means for?

The fears in my head are a means to an end of protection.

What are yours doing for you?

With love,

Sarah